Pressing News
by PaperKat
Summary: Companion piece to Starhawk's First Series. A day in Kristet's work life. Set sometime after Cricket.


Pressing News

By Paperkat

Owned by Starhawk

Kristet walked into the K-Wind press office and after the normal round of greetings that consisted of half heard 'Hellos' and unconscious 'How are yous?', she sat down to start the day. With a quick glance at the calendar Kristet saw that she had been working there for a little over a year.

Kristet had long since stopped trying to order her life by her memories alone. Kinn's disease prevented her from knowing if the memories she had of interviewing for this job happened last week or last year, but the facts never lied. She clearly remembered the date she had started and it was a simple matter to compare that to the calendar.

It was never consistent how long her memories stayed linear, though it did seem like the more exciting and fast paced the event the more cohesive the memory. Anything mundane or repetitive usually ended up in a gigantic loop of other memories, one totally indistinguishable from the others. 

Before Kristet discovered what she called 'Time-logging' it wasn't unusual for her to buy the same groceries over and over. She could remember needing them (a relatively important event) but the memory of purchasing them was a minor event and would get swallowed up with all the other times she had bought food.

Her disability should have stopped her from having a normal life, it did for most sufferers. In fact most people afflicted with Kinn's couldn't even function from day to day without constant supervision. It was hard to explain to others just how confusing it was to operate in a linear world when your mind decided without you what it wanted to remember and when. 

Kristet had no since of time. She understood time in very clinical way, but it didn't make much an impression on her. She really didn't even have an idea of how old she was or the real significance of it. When the beginning, middle and the end of events could be interchangeable it did little good to think of things in the future or the past. Kristet functioned in the moment and pushed all thoughts to the outside unless she needed them for the present, and that's when her 'Time-log' came in.

She still couldn't believe that her Red Ranger obsession had landed her her dream assignment. Since Andros had always been in the spotlight from an early age she had once thought that she could find a way to use that to orient herself and her memories with recorded events. But that had turned out to be a bust, but the inclination to always follow the Red Ranger's activities had never left her.

She had thought that she and put herself on the black list by being caught by Zhane, but somehow instead she had made herself forefront in their minds just at the time they needed someone to help with PR.

She knew that the Rangers only thought that they needed help with press conferences and making the public aware of their general activities, but they couldn't see themselves the way that citizens saw them. There was a murmur of unrest on KO-35 concerning their Rangers. The Kerovans weren't sure if their young Rangers were up to the task of protecting them.

Kristet knew that the general public's main problem in seeing these new Rangers as a serious team was their memory of the old one. It was strange to Kristet that people that could remember things linearly could still be hung up on memories of the past even though they knew that was no longer the way things were. But people still saw children with hand-me-down morphers that were never meant to fight. They remembered that of those original five, one had been kidnapped, then never replaced and of the remaining four only Andros took on the mantle of protector. 

It didn't help much that Zhane had gone and found his own powers and made it obvious that he only did it to be close to Andros. How was the populous going to trust him or take him seriously when he seemed so self-serving? 

Karone and Ty were right. She had to find a way to de-deify Andros without losing him the respect that he deserved and then try and give Zhane a bit more seriousness, then once that was accomplished she had to separate that from their Ranger duties. Make the public realize that the Rangers were real and human with all the concerns of normal people, but that was left behind when they were Rangers.

Adding to the Rangers problems was that Ashley was an alien, a popular, beloved alien that unfortunately seemed to be regarded more like a cherished pet than a real Ranger despite her help in freeing KO-35 in the first place. Then there was Karone the ex-Priness of Evil. Kristet just shook her head and gave up trying to rationalize Karone's place on the team having no memories to contract the ones that she had of Karone and her former life. 

The Rangers' major saving grace was Ty. An ordinary citizen that was found worthy enough by the Power to have a morpher. Then the solution to the Ranger's publicity problem hit her head on. That's what she had to do! She had to show that this team had been truly chosen in the traditional way and that they were chosen for KO-35. 

Kerovans knew that in Ranger history it was more natural that the Power chose its wielder. It had only been in recent times that morphers were 'passed down' from one Ranger to another, but even then it was believed that the Power influenced the decisions. KO-35 had gone against that by treating the morphers in their possession as a commodity, giving them as rewards for service. The public seemed to forget that those old morphers were now on Earth and that the Power the Kerovan Team possessed were acquired on a true Power Quest. 

It was the perfect angle to get the public to start believing in their Rangers as they should. The only problem was that Kristet knew that she wasn't any good at personal pieces, she only dealt with facts. _But Diela would be perfect_, Kristet thought as a flood of memories assaulted her of Diela's favorable view of the current Rangers.

Kristet turned on her station and accessed her schedule and looked for Diela's name. It didn't matter that she had a clear memory of Diela saying that she would be on vacation all this week. As far as Kristet knew that could have been a memory from a week or a month ago.

She had once had a list that catalogued all of her co-worker's activities, at least the one's that she bothered to associate with. But that had proven to be too time consuming and ineffectual in helping Kristet interact with her co-workers. Having to reference a written log all the time had been more than she had been willing to cope with.

Kristet brought up Diela's file on her specialized polarized holographic viewer and slipped her glasses on. No one would be able to see what she saw on the display, it was designed to only be viewable with her glasses. It gave her the reputation of being a prima donna, but she had found that it was the best way to function in secrecy. Her husband had designed the covert system for her. She even had a miniature one in her bracelet set though it had very limited ability.

Thinking of her husband made Kristet smile. She quickly thought about writing herself a note to check and see if the fight she was remembering now was current enough that she had to be upset with her husband when she got home. With a chuckle she discarded the idea. Did it really matter if they had had a fleeting fight if even with all of her memories of their fights combined she still loved him like no other? 

A quick search on the key words 'Diela's schedule' brought up a few hundred files. Eliminating anything over a month old left Kristet with only five. She keyed up the visual files and viewed them.

Kristet had become rather good at reading lips because couldn't chance someone overhearing her recordings. She use to write down everything that she had seen and heard in a journal, but she found herself writing more in the journal than in her own work. Using recording as a tool for her to function had some drawbacks. If she didn't conduct the right kind of search she could miss something, but she finally realized the normal people forgot things all the time, so no one would find it strange that she seemingly did too. 

Kristet never forgot anything that she had seen, but her inability to place events and memories in order made having a photographic memory nearly useless. If she tried to Kristet could remember every time Diela said that she would be on vacation, with perfect clarity, but she couldn't tell if it was from a year ago, 10 years ago or yesterday. Unless someone said the exact date of their activity Kristet had no reference. What good is it to be told that Liberation Day was next week when you couldn't even tell if this week was your first week on the job or your hundredth?

Seeing nothing in her recordings to indicate that Diela would be gone, Kristet removed her glasses and locked down her station before getting up to find her co-worker. She knew that this was not what the Rangers had originally planed for her to accomplish working with them, but what they didn't know wouldn't get her into trouble.

Kristet rounded the corner to another set of offices, set off by a small open break/lounge area, where the columnists worked. As she approached she could just make out an assortment of voices.

"I'm telling you I saw them, her and Zhane were kissing at the skyport and it didn't look like it was the first time either. You know that they were always seen at parties together when Ashley first arrived." A nasally sounding woman said excitedly.

"Zhane kisses everybody. That's no big deal," A voice that Kristet recognized as Diela replied offhandedly, stating a well-known and documented fact.

"That's nothing! I saw her and the Red Ranger right in the middle of the library steaming up the screens so bad it was wonder any of the terminals were working once they left," another voice said.

"So. Everyone knows that they're probably together," Diela explained, but no one seemed to be paying her any attention.

"My Huils saw Ashley and that Purple Ranger being awfully chummy with each other in the park a few months ago." 

"Hey!" Diela exclaimed, now sounding upset. "I was there with Huils. They weren't doing anything but relaxing. I think you're reading more into that than there was."

"With her head in that woman's lap? How could anyone possibly read anything into that?" the same woman replied with a humorless chuckle.

"Well, what I heard was that her and Ty were making the rounds at markets together," said the nasal lady.

"And I thought the Silver Ranger was bad!" the other voice exclaimed to the delight of the others excluding Diela that all but exploded back at them.

"Did it ever occur to any of you that maybe the reason that Ashley Hammond is being seen with all of them is because she's their teammate and that she likes spending time with them?"

"Quality time by the looks of it," the nasal woman replied with a snicker. "And what is with her having a last name, but no husband anyway?"

Before Kristet could react, Diela came barreling out of the break area and right into her. They exchanged apologies, and when Diela turned to return to her office, Kristet caught her arm.

"I heard what they were saying in there."

"Can you believe those, those people?! A few months ago they couldn't stop talking about how nice it was to have a people friendly Ranger on the team, and one that had experience at that. Now all they want to do is criticize Ashley for the qualities they were raving about."

"How would you like to change how people see the Rangers? Not just Ashley, but all of them in a new way."

Diela looked more than just intrigued. She knew that Kristet had never before allowed access to the Rangers.

"What do you have in mind?"

End Pressing News 


End file.
